The present invention lies in the field of automotive electronics. In the year 2012 the NCAP (European New Car Assessment Program) Organisation published a roadmap [4], from which it is clear that from the year 2016 Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) systems are to be introduced into new motor vehicles on a broad level. It is expected in the future that electronic systems for autonomous driving will be used on the market firstly for premium vehicles and later on the mass market.
From a technical/commercial viewpoint it is a great challenge to design these electronic systems, of which the functionality in prototypes has already been demonstrated [5], such that the required functionality and reliability can be achieved at reasonable cost. Besides the one-off development costs, the recurring production costs of the computer hardware and the maintenance costs are of particular significance in the mass market.
The electronic system for autonomous control of vehicles typically consists of the following components:                1. A number of diverse sensor components (camera, radar, laser, ultrasound, etc.) for monitoring the path of travel and the surroundings of the vehicle.        2. A sensor fusion component, which is usually realised redundant and which processes sensor data, creates within the computer a three-dimensional model of the surroundings, and determines the control values for the actuators.        3. A man/machine interface component, which accepts the control values from the driver and forwards these to an intelligent actuator controller component (AST).        4. A monitor component, which monitors the driver in order to determine the attentiveness of the driver.        5. An intelligent actuator controller component (AST), which receives the control values from the sensor component and the man/machine interface component and decides who has control of the vehicle and which control values are to be forwarded to the physical actuators (brakes, steering, engine) in the vehicle.        
In accordance with the prior art these components are connected ad hoc via dedicated data and signal lines or with use of relatively slow bus systems (for example CAN bus or FlexRay).